“I can make an attempt,”—said Vaughan, with due humility. “If I succeed will you give me one or two dances presently?”
“With pleasure!”
“Oh! you are coming in to the Somers’s, then?” said Lord Melthorpe, in a pleased tone. “That’s right. You know, Fred, you’re so absent-minded to-night that you never said ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ when I asked you to accompany us.”
“Didn’t I? I’m awfully sorry!” and, having fastened the glove with careful daintiness, he smiled. “Please set down my rudeness and distraction to the uncanny influence of El-Râmi; I can’t imagine any other reason.”
They all laughed carelessly, as people in an idle humour laugh at trifles, and the carriage bore them on to their destination—a great house in Queen’s Gate, where a magnificent entertainment was being held in honour of some serene and exalted foreign potentate who had taken it into his head to see how London amused itself during a “season.” The foreign potentate had heard that the splendid English capital was full of gloom and misery—that its women were unapproachable, and its men difficult to make friends with; and all these erroneous notions had to be dispersed in his serene and exalted brain, no matter what his education cost the “Upper Ten” who undertook to enlighten his barbarian ignorance.
Meanwhile, the subject of Lord Melthorpe’s conversation—El-Râmi, or El-Râmi-Zarânos, as he was called by those of his own race—was walking quietly homewards with that firm, swift, yet apparently unhasting pace which so often distinguishes the desert-born savage, and so seldom gives grace to the deportment of the cultured citizen. It was a mild night in May; the weather was unusually fine and warm; the skies were undarkened by any mist or cloud, and the stars shone forth with as much brilliancy as though the city lying under their immediate ken had been the smiling fairy Florence, instead of the brooding giant London. Now and again El-Râmi raised his eyes to the sparkling belt of Orion, which glittered aloft with a lustre that is seldom seen in the hazy English air;—he was thinking his own thoughts, and the fact that there were many passers to and fro in the streets besides himself did not appear to disturb him in the least, for he strode through their ranks without any hurry or jostling, as if he alone existed, and they were but shadows.
“What fools are the majority of men!” he mused. “How easy to gull them, and how willing they are to be gulled! How that silly young Vaughan marvelled at my prophecy of his marriage!—as if it were not as easy to foretell as that two and two inevitably make four! Given the characters of people in the same way that you give figures, and you are certain to arrive at a sum-total of them in time. How simple the process of calculation as to Vaughan’s matrimonial prospects! Here are the set of numerals I employed: Two nights ago I heard Lord Melthorpe say he meant to marry his cousin Fred to Miss Chester, daughter of Jabez Chester of New York. Miss Chester herself entered the room a few minutes later on, and I saw the sort of young woman she was. To-night at the theatre I see her again;—in an opposite box, well back in shadow, I perceive Lord Melthorpe. Young Vaughan, whose character I know to be of such weakness that it can be moulded whichever way a stronger will turns it, sits close behind me; and I proceed to make the little sum-total. Given Lord Melthorpe, with a determination that resembles the obstinacy of a pig rather than of a man; Frederick Vaughan, with no determination at all; and the little Chester girl, with her heart set on an English title, even though it only be that of a baronet, and the marriage is certain. What was uncertain was the possibility of their all meeting to-night; but they were all there, and I counted that possibility as the fraction over,—there is always a fraction over in character-sums; it stands as Providence or Fate, and must always be allowed for. I chanced it, and won. I always do win in these things,—these ridiculous trifles of calculation, which are actually accepted as prophetic utterances by people who never will think out anything for themselves. Good heavens! what a monster-burden of crass ignorance and wilful stupidity this poor planet has groaned under ever since it was hurled into space! Immense!—incalculable! And for what purpose? For what progress? For what end?”
He stopped a moment; he had walked from the Strand up through Piccadilly, and was now close to Hyde Park. Taking out his watch, he glanced at the time—it was close upon midnight. All at once he was struck fiercely from behind, and the watch he held was snatched from his hand by a man who had no sooner committed the theft than he uttered a loud cry, and remained inert and motionless. El-Râmi turned quietly round and surveyed him.
“Well, my friend?” he inquired blandly—“What did you do that for?”
The fellow stared about him vaguely, but seemed unable to answer,—his arm was stiffly outstretched, and the watch was clutched fast within his palm.